by Garry Disher
“No.”
“Never served with them?”
“No.”
“You’re not a second cousin or ex-girlfriend or ex-academy buddy with any of them?”
“No.”
He glanced at Rosie DeLisle. “You?”
“Never met them, Paul, never served with them, no relationship with them, however tenuous.”
Hirsch chewed on his bottom lip
Croome said, “Please, Constable, it’s very important.”
Hirsch liked her better now, marginally. “I can give you local gossip, that’s all.”
Croome’s face said she’d noted the fancy footwork. If he was merely repeating gossip, he wasn’t a spy or a whistle-blower. “Fair enough.”
Hirsch gathered himself. “Look, they’re not popular. Arrogant, heavy-handed, and this is a sleepy country town. It could be argued that Kropp has been there too long, has networked his way into it so thoroughly and has so much power, he tends to think of the place as his.”
“Like Quine?” Rosie said.
Hirsch nodded. “Like Quine.” He considered his words: “Kropp needs order,” he said, “but he and the others overdo it with unnecessary speed and drunk-driving traps, on-the-spot fines, screaming in people’s faces even if all they’d done was jaywalk.”
Then he recalled the way Nicholson and Andrewartha had talked about Melia Donovan and her brother, and their treatment of Jenny Dee. He cocked his head at Croome. “If you’re a female or black you’re probably a bit of a target.”
They fell silent. Is Kropp another Quine? Hirsch wondered. He pictured the full, frothing intensity of Quine, the stamp of his unimaginable expertise, but couldn’t quite match Kropp with that. By the same token, hard men like Quine and Kropp could be found in police stations all around the country.
“Care to elaborate?”
Hirsch’s instinct was to shut up. Impressions were dangerous if there was no substance to them. But impressions were all he had. “I don’t have hard facts. I don’t know any teenage girls.”
“Yes you do,” Croome said, and Hirsch didn’t like the way she said it. He waited.
“Melia Donovan and Gemma Pitcher.”
Hirsch waited. Was the older man in Melia Donovan’s life a local copper?
“Paul,” Rosie said, “it’s been alleged the Redruth officers demand sexual favors of young girls in return for dropping charges they might be facing. Minor charges like shoplifting, drunkenness, possession …”
“So if you could get a bit closer to your colleagues,” Croome said, “you–”
Hirsch ignored her and flared at DeLisle. “The term ‘false pretenses’ comes to mind. I’ve helped you people enough. Consider this meeting over.”
“Paul,” said Rosie soothingly, “there’s someone we’d like you to meet.”
Croome got to her feet and entered a short corridor at the end of the room. She tapped on a door, cracked it open, stuck her head in. Hirsch heard murmurs and then she was standing back and making a this way gesture with one arm.
A teenage girl emerged.
“There’s nothing to fear,” Croome said, gently ushering the girl to the sofa and settling her into it. Rosie left the table and sat beside her, giving the girl a smile of warm brilliance, then Croome sat, and now Hirsch had the three of them staring at him from the sofa.
“Paul, I’d like you to meet Emily Hobba.”
Hobba looked barely fifteen but might have been older. She was pretty in an unformed, second-glance way, with a kid’s open round face, long brown hair falling from either side of a ragged center part. Her frame was thin, almost bony, inside a lilac T-shirt, a scrap of floral miniskirt and half a dozen clanking bangles. She caught him looking and immediately gave him a lopsided smile. Startled, he struggled not to return it. It wasn’t quite neutral, that smile.
And as if she’d promptly forgotten him, Hobba took out a mobile phone and in seconds was working it, texting crazily with a faint grin. Hirsch glanced at Croome, then Rosie, raising an eyebrow. They shrugged minutely as if to say, It’s the way it is, nothing we can do about it.
Rosie placed a hand on Emily’s forearm. Long, tanned, slender fingers. Hirsch looked away from them, concentrated as she said, “Late last year, Emily got involved in a …” she hesitated “… scene involving some other young girls and a number of men.”
Emily lifted her head and said clearly, eyes bright and clear, “Sex scene.”
“Indeed,” Rosie said.
“The men wore masks, we wore nothing.”
Hirsch thought he should chip in. “Where was this?”
Emily shrugged. “Here and there. People’s houses. I mean, I was totally wasted, you know? Out of it.”
“She means Adelaide,” Croome said. “Inner suburbs, outer suburbs.”
“Sometimes the country,” Hobba said, anxious to put her right. “We’d be picked up in this big car and stay away a couple of days. Everything laid on, party, party, party. I’d be that sore.”
The country. Hirsch said, “Where in the country, Emily?”
“How would I know?”
Hirsch frowned at DeLisle and Croome. Croome said, “Tell Paul what you saw in the newspaper.”
Hobba brightened. “Oh yeah. Okay. Well, you know that girl what got run over, I reckernized her.”
“Melia Donovan.”
“I reckernized her.”
“She was at one of the parties in the country?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Who else was there?”
Bored, Hobba said, “There was this one other chick.”
“Was her name Gemma?”
“Dunno. Maybe.”
Croome interrupted. “Emily nearly died of an overdose after one of these weekend parties. Someone dumped her outside a hospital in the Barossa Valley. It threw a little scare into you, didn’t it, Em? She told a counselor and the counselor contacted us.”
Hirsch looked to the girl for confirmation. She shrugged and gave him a whisper of a bat of the eyelids.
“What was Gemma’s role?”
“I dunno … Anal? Golden showers? She did what we did.”
“I mean, was there any sense that she recruited Melia?”
“Nup.”
“How many times did you attend the same party as Melia Donovan?”
“I dunno, it’s a bit of a blur, maybe only once.”
“When was this?”
“What’s with all the questions? Don’t you believe me? He doesn’t believe me.”
“Em, it’s all right, he’s come into this new, he needs to fill in the gaps.”
“Well he can stop with the questions.”
Croome said, “Emily, I know it’s a long shot, a lot’s happened, but if you saw photographs of the men who might have been involved, would you recognize body shape, bearing, body language, do you think?”
Emily gave a teenage shrug. “I was like totally out of it. I just have this feeling of like black masks over their eyes and this one guy wearing a uniform.”
Croome and DeLisle stared at Hirsch as if to say, Now can you see why we want your help?
Hirsch said, “He arrived in a uniform? You caught only a glimpse of it?”
Emily snorted. “He wore it like the whole time, like rubbing our faces in it. I need the loo.”
She leapt from the sofa and disappeared into a room off the hallway. Hirsch watched her go. “How did Emily get involved? Did someone recruit her?”
“A girl called Lily Humphreys, they were in a youth training programme together,” Croome said. “Humphreys got out first, took Emily under her wing when she was released. What that boiled down to was, ‘Would you like to party with these cool guys I know?’ Emily said yes. They did this a few times over several months, city and rural locations. Sex, booze, cocaine, probably GHB. Then one day Emily wakes up in a hospital in the Barossa Valley, sore and torn and bruised. She mends slowly, but starts to have flashbacks. They scare her. She puts them togeth
er with the state of her body and confesses things to a counselor who then gets in touch with us.”
“Flashbacks.”
“Men wearing masks, someone getting rough with her and another telling him to go easy, things like that.”
“So speak to Lily Humphreys.”
“Disappeared.”
“Disappeared as in she’s probably lying dead somewhere, or disappeared as in address unknown?”
“The latter. Packed all her things and hopped on a plane to the Gold Coast, according to Emily.”
“When?”
“While Em was in hospital.”
“She got spooked.”
“Yes.”
“It would be worth checking to see if Gemma Pitcher was in youth training with either of them.”
Croome smiled. “One step ahead of you. Humphreys and Pitcher were there at the same time, but before Emily’s time.”
Hirsch glanced at Rosie DeLisle. “Gemma’s disappeared. I’ve done all I can to find her, you’ve got better resources than I have.”
“Sure.”
Hirsch nodded his thanks. “What about Emily’s parents? Siblings?”
“Paul, we’re talking ex foster kids who shared a flat, no one looking out for them.”
Hirsch nodded gloomily. “When did you learn about her?”
“Three months ago. We didn’t know where or how to start the investigation, and then a couple of days ago she texted me to say she’d recognized Melia Donovan’s picture in the paper as one of the girls at the party.”
Hirsch fetched out his phone. “I have a snap of Gemma Pitcher. I could show it to Emily.”
“Good idea,” Rosie said. Then she gave Croome a look. “She’s been in the loo a while …”
Croome blinked. “Oh, fuck.”
She raced away, and when they heard thumps and drama, Hirsch and DeLisle ran to investigate. They found the sex crimes inspector on the bathroom floor, slapping the teenager’s face, shouting, “What did you take? Emily! Wake up! What did you take?”
Brushing her away feebly, Emily Hobba said, “Gerroff me.”
CHAPTER 17
HIRSCH HEADED BACK TO the bush that evening, wondering how he could appear to pass on information about his colleagues without passing on information about them. His head ached.
Ached again on Friday, all that paperwork, so that a run out into the dry country east of Tiverton was a relief. Then Kropp called him. “A little bird tells me you came out of the Quine hearing smelling of roses. No flies on you. But given that you haven’t been sacked or jailed, may I remind you that your presence is needed here tomorrow?”
“Crowd control, I remember. Football hooligans.”
“Just get your arse down here for an eleven o’clock briefing.”
SATURDAY. HIRSCH SHOWERED, PULLED on his uniform and strapped his baby Beretta to an ankle holster. He drove to Redruth. Kropp said, “Nice of you to join us, Constable Hirschhausen.”
Hirsch checked his watch. 11 A.M. “Am I late, Sarge?”
“In this job, on my watch, you arrive early.”
“I’ll remember that, Sarge,” said Hirsch, giving Nicholson a winning grin. Andrewartha was there, and Dee, but Kropp had also brought in two constables from Clare: Revell and Molnar. Big men, stony, full of dim menace.
“Gents,” said Hirsch with a wink.
“Stop arsing around and take a seat,” Kropp said.
He’d pinned seven photographs to the board, head-and-shoulders shots of five white and two Aboriginal men. Four of the seven were young, three in early middle age. Sullen faces mostly, full of hard-won experience, men whose work, education, relationship and financial histories were paltry or nonexistent. Kropp’s view of them was simple: slapping their faces with the flat of his pointer he said, “Behold the enemy.”
Maybe so, thought Hirsch, but how far removed are they from guys like Nicholson and Andrewartha? Kropp’s constables were just as young, poorly educated and lacking in work and life experiences. Equally clannish and suspicious of diversity. Attracted to police work because it’s inward-looking, secretive and protective. And it licenses the art and craft of thumping other human beings.
“As I was saying, Constable Hirschhausen.”
Hirsch blinked. “Loud and clear, Sarge.”
“As I was saying, these magnificent specimens of Australian manhood are a nuisance when sober and an absolute nightmare when they get on the grog. Stir in a football premiership …”
And you get blood and broken glass.
“We have some long hours ahead of us, but I’ve secured overtime. Best-case scenario, the night proves to be a fizzer, but last year we had a glassing that resulted in permanent blindness in one eye, a full-on brawl in the Woolman, resulting in hospitalization, and a fatality when some kids had a drag race just out past the motel.”
Here Kropp’s voice cracked a little. Hirsch was curious. The guy seemed genuine, rising on his toes as he spoke, lifted by his emotions, as if the town were his and he its civilizing force.
Yeah, well, the Redruth sergeant was also a template for the hard men who ran fiefdoms around the state, men who’d turn evasive, verbose and arrogant if you tried to pin them down. But clever men, a witness-box headache to every judge, magistrate and defense and prosecution barrister in the land. How long had Kropp been here? Twelve years?
Kropp slapped the pointer down and folded his arms. “Questions? No, well get to it then.”
Hirsch glanced at his watch: almost noon. The game wouldn’t start until early afternoon, allowing time for a quick lunch. He glanced at Dee and mimed eating. She nodded.
“Aww,” said Nicholson, catching it, “the first blush of young love.”
Dee ignored him but went pink, looked down as she gathered her things.
Andrewartha got in on the act. Working a concerned frown onto his face he said, “I hope you’re sexually responsible, Constable Hirschhausen. For your convenience, a protective sheath dispenser has been installed in the men’s room.”
“Nah,” Nicholson said, “our boy likes to feel it.”
“Then he’s in for a disappointment,” Andrewartha said. “Word is, he’ll find a lack of tactile integrity, if you get my meaning.”
“Totally do,” Nicholson said. “She overused it at the academy.”
“Yep.”
“Look at Hirschhausen, cracking the shits.”
“You’re so funny,” Dee said.
“We think so.”
These clowns, Hirsch thought, deserve to be informed on.
AN HOUR LATER HE was patrolling the Redruth oval listlessly, watching for hotheads, just as he’d done years ago, a raw cadet.
Except he hadn’t come full circle, exactly. For a start, here in the world of small towns and farms, the spectators were few and did their drinking and fuming in private, cocooned in cars parked snout up to a white perimeter fence. Once in a while a door would open and the occupant woud raise the tailgate or boot to rummage for another can of beer, but other than that they might have been at a church picnic. He recognized some of the Tiverton locals, including the Muirs, Tennant and Ray Latimer, who was there with his sons and a solid-looking older man. The boys’ grandfather? Horns tooted desultorily, a woman knitted a baby’s jacket, a man sipped Thermos tea, a dog pissed on a car tire.
When the wind came up, whipping a scarf from a car aerial, Hirsch retrieved it and handed it to the kid seated at the wheel.
“Thanks.”
He peered in at the boys in the back. “Nathan?”
Melia Donovan’s brother looked hunted, his dark eyes liquid in his dark face. The boy beside him was on Kropp’s watch list. Sam Hempel sat beside the driver.
Hirsch straightened his back, saluted. “Enjoy the game.”
“Yeah.”
Hirsch turned to go and saw Andrewartha watching him.
“That figures—mates with the boongs.”
Hirsch winked. “I’ll put your name down for sensitivity training, shal
l I?”
“Fuck off.”
Time dragged. Hirsch’s feet hurt. The game didn’t interest him even though the score was close, each side kicking too few goals, too many points. With halftime due, he headed for a van parked inside the main gate and bought four spring rolls. The woman who served him was Thai; he watched her fry the rolls in a spitting pan. Then the siren sounded and people poured from their cars, forming a line at the van window, a pulsing pressure point. Hirsch watched tensely, but nothing happened, the queue was orderly. The Latimers appeared, Jack giving Hirsch a tiny wave, Raymond a glare. The older boy was plump and hangdog, trying to appear unattached.
Then Kropp arrived in a police car, pulling up behind the Thai food van. He got out, bent his solid back into the rear compartment, emerged with uncooked spring rolls and packaged paper cups and plates. Hirsch watched him hand the bags to the woman in the van, plant a kiss on her cheek and wave goodbye. But he took his time leaving, striding like a general down the queue of spectators, winking, geddaying, giving the evil eye, shaking hands with Ray Latimer, ruffling Jack’s hair.
Dee materialized at Hirsch’s elbow, small and perky in her uniform. “What would you call that? Crowd management? Improving public relations?”
“Constable, please, a little respect. But who’s the woman, that’s the real issue.”
“Wife? Girlfriend?”
“Nice little sideline,” Hirsch said.
“The woman or the spring rolls?”
AT THE FINAL BELL, Redruth was four points ahead and Hirsch broke up a shoving match. Dee’s shins were sprayed by spurting gravel as she dodged an irate station wagon. Andrewartha got into the face of a screeching woman. Nicholson and the other constables whisked a man to the lockup.
And then it was all over. The scarf knitter and the old tea drinker and the tired farming families were gone, leaving only wrappers tumbled like scrapping birds as the wind rose.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Kropp said, reappearing in his police car. “Consider this the lull before the storm. By nine or ten o’clock the troublemakers will be spoiling for a fight. Meanwhile, grab yourselves a quick bite and then start making your presence felt.”
Free hamburgers from the town’s Greasy Joe, and at six o’clock they split into two units and began to prowl the streets, pubs and through roads of the town, Hirsch, Nicholson and Revell in one car, Andrewartha, Dee and Molnar in the other.